Chapter 4

Everett C. Hughes (1897–1983) was trained in American urban sociology at the University of Chicago in the 1920s and is well known for his publications on the division of labor, professions, race relations, and interdisciplinary approaches to the study of society. In his 1974 Malinowski Award address, Hughes discussed the problem of access to information for social scientists and ramifications of the relationship between the person doing the study and those being studied. He set his discussion of these issues and their scientific and ethical implications in the context of the development of anthropology and sociology in Great Britain and the U.S. The superiority conferred on early anthropologists and sociologists by colonialism and class has faded, he concluded, and social scientists were approaching equality with the subjects of their study.